Chapter 109
Towler drove. Poe sat in the back with Océane.
He put in his AirPods and called Bradshaw to discuss their options.
The evidence Océane had taken with her from New York was compelling, but he’d been a cop long enough to know that when its chain of custody, its veracity, and the witness herself were challenged by two-grand-an-hour lawyers, it wouldn’t see the inside of a courtroom.
It would be hearsay, fruit of the poisoned tree.
The desperate lies of a murderer. He thought their best bet was to put a package together, make it as damning as they could, then show it to the Red Chamber and call their bluff.
Tell them they were going public. And if that didn’t work, it should at least get them close enough for Towler to send in his boys.
Bradshaw was uncharacteristically non-responsive.
‘What is it, Tilly?’
‘I don’t think your plan will work, Poe.’
‘It’ll work. I’ll make it work.’
‘But what if it doesn’t?’
‘Then we give Matt the green light.’
Towler whooped from the driver’s seat. Banged the steering wheel in excitement.
‘That’s a short-term solution, Poe,’ Bradshaw said. ‘You know that. You said that.’
Poe had. It didn’t matter. Going public was plan A, Towler was plan B. He didn’t have a plan C. ‘It’s all we have at the moment,’ he said. ‘But we’ll keep thinking.’
But it turned out thinking was all Bradshaw had been doing for the last seven hours.
Thinking and planning. Planning and thinking.
And she’d had an idea. She said his plan and Towler’s plan sucked, but she had one that didn’t.
She said it was audacious and it wasn’t a short-term fix. It was a permanent solution.
But she wouldn’t tell Poe what it was.
He asked why. She said it was morally bankrupt.
That it had implications far beyond their own predicament.
He said she should tell him anyway. He reminded her that Estelle had said there were no rules when it came to getting Esmerée back.
Nothing was off limits. But still she wouldn’t say what it was. Didn’t matter how he asked.
Eventually he lost his temper, something he rarely did with Bradshaw. ‘Tilly, tell me what your bloody idea is!’
Bradshaw was silent for a moment. ‘OK, Poe,’ she said. ‘But don’t be disappointed with me. I would hate that.’
Which was oil on his water. Calmed him down immediately. ‘I won’t be disappointed with you, Tilly. Ever.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘Cross my heart.’
‘OK then,’ she said. ‘But please remember that although this is a bad thing, it comes from a good place.’
‘Nothing’s off limits, Tilly.’
‘You might change your mind when you hear my idea.’
Poe almost changed his mind. Almost. When Bradshaw finished explaining what she wanted to do, his only response was ‘Crikey’. She’d said her plan was audacious, but he thought another word fitted it better. And that word was ‘horrific’. He said, ‘Crikey’ again.
‘What?’ Towler said.
‘Tilly’s had an idea. It’s … different.’
‘Good different or bad different?’
Poe didn’t answer. He handed Towler one of his AirPods.
‘Tell Matt, Tilly. He has the morals of an alley cat. If he thinks it’s too much, we can have a rethink.’
Bradshaw explained her idea again. It sounded much worse the second time Poe heard it.
‘You can do that?’ Towler asked when she’d finished.
‘I can.’
‘Then I think it’s fucking brilliant.’
‘Do it, Tilly,’ Poe said immediately.
‘I’ll need some help,’ Bradshaw replied. ‘I won’t know the right words to say.’
Poe didn’t hesitate. ‘Estelle will. And I think she’s in the perfect frame of mind.’
‘I’ll talk to her as soon as I hang up. We’ll have something ready by the time you get back.’
‘And you’re OK doing this, Tilly?’
‘I am, Poe. I want to get Esmerée back just as much as you and Estelle. I believe this gives us the best chance of long-term success.’
And possibly World War III, Poe thought but didn’t say. ‘Why haven’t you told me about this before?’
‘Because it’s exceptionally controlled intelligence.
Even Matthew doesn’t have a high enough level of clearance, and his clearance is high.
Alastor Locke doesn’t even know it exists, although it was something he asked for that necessitated its design.
I keep telling him the thing he wants isn’t ready. I don’t think his intentions are pure.’
‘You lied to him?’
‘I don’t tell lies, Poe. I told him it wasn’t ready to be applied in the field yet. But that was because the person who decides it’s ready to be applied in the field is me. Therefore, it will never be ready for him to use as I will never say it is ready. Do you understand, Poe?’
‘It’s not a difficult concept to follow, Tilly.
It’s like when you tell me you didn’t see any Cumberland sausage at the butchers.
It’s not that they don’t have any; it’s that you deliberately don’t look where you know it is.
I got wise to that little trick ages ago. Is there anything we can do now?’
Bradshaw said anything that Océane had stolen from Vincent du Buk would be useful. She would get everything else she needed from the FBI and NCA servers.
Poe asked Océane for the brown leather conference folder she was holding across her chest. He photographed everything and emailed it to Bradshaw.
While he waited for her to acknowledge receipt, he stole a glance at Océane.
He couldn’t imagine what was going through her mind right now.
She’d been keeping her head down – figuratively and literally – hiding from the Red Chamber, from the authorities, but despite doing everything right, two men had arrived in the small hours regardless. Turned her life upside down again.
Poe was dishevelled and exhausted and Towler’s five o’clock shadow would have shamed Fred Flintstone.
Towler was glaring at Océane in the rear-view mirror like everything was her fault.
And although part of it was – Océane had abandoned her daughter, she had set Esmerée on her quest, she had sucked Towler into her gravity well – the real blame lay with the Red Chamber.
They were the monsters. They were killing women.
Skinning them. And Towler knew this. Poe thought his friend was probably building up his anger.
Keeping it bottled, ready to use when it mattered.
The Red Chamber weren’t planning to hand over Esmerée willingly.
They wanted to have their cake and eat it, an idiom Bradshaw hated.
She said it made no sense and that a grammatically correct version would be ‘You can’t eat your cake and still have it.
’ Not that Bradshaw ate cake. It wasn’t vegan-friendly.
At least the cakes Poe bought weren’t. He judged the quality of a cake by the ratio of raspberry jam and cream to sponge.
Poe’s phone chirped. GOT THEM, Bradshaw’s text message said.
When they were out of East Sussex and on more reliable roads, Poe started digging into how Océane had come to be a concubine and, more importantly, how she’d found out the true nature of the Red Chamber’s business.
The first part was in line with what they’d gathered from Xiang and Chao at the Szechuan Palace, and the tattooist Kai Jin.
She had been recruited because of her extraordinary beauty, her sexuality, and the fact she was still a virgin.
Océane said her stepfather had put her off sex for life.
And the reason she’d been open to recruitment was exactly as Kai had said – her love for bees and beekeeping and a yearning to live on a farm in the South Downs.
Poe understood that last bit. He empathised with her.
A few years earlier, when he’d been vilified by the press after a mistake he’d made left a suspect dead, he’d sold everything he had and hunkered down in an old shepherd’s cottage on Shap Fell, the most isolated part of the most isolated county in the country.
Shap Fell was so isolated even the badgers asked for directions. Poe understood Océane’s dream.
What he didn’t understand was how she could abandon her daughter when her own mother had abandoned her.
Why she actively disliked her. Why she’d called Esmerée a ‘little bitch’ and said she’d ‘ruined everything’.
He decided not to ask about that just yet.
He thought it might shut her down. Instead, he said, ‘How did you find out about the Red Chamber’s intentions? Their true intentions.’
‘By accident,’ she replied. ‘I’d just had my annual portfolio meeting.
The guys were good about that. They showed me where they’d made investments on my behalf.
Asked if there were any areas I might be interested in.
That kind of thing. All bullshit, of course.
They probably showed the same set of accounts to every girl.
I asked Vincent for his input. He worked on Wall Street and knew how money worked.
But instead of offering advice, he sort of dismissed it.
Later that night we had a row about it. He was drunk on baijiu and said something he shouldn’t have. ’
‘I don’t know what baijiu is.’
Towler said, ‘It’s a clear grain alcohol, Poe. Strong as fuck. I only had it the once but that was enough. Pissed the bed and woke up to find some bloke licking my feet.’
‘You had quite the youth, Matt,’ Poe said.
‘It was last year.’
‘Baijiu has been China’s national drink for five millennia,’ Océane said. ‘The Red Chamber always bought Vincent a bottle. I don’t know if it was because everyone got one, or because Vincent was helpful regarding their investments. He didn’t always keep the best company.’
‘So we gather.’
‘Anyway, he was very drunk, and when I shouted that he should help me with my money, he let it slip that there was no point. That I wasn’t getting a penny of it. Vincent was a blackout drunk, so in the morning, he didn’t remember any of it. But I did.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Not long into my contract.’
‘You stayed with him?’
‘I was a slave in all but name. I accompanied him to social events, sometimes as his PA, sometimes as his out-of-town niece, and I occasionally cooked for him, but my main role was to satisfy his urges. Essentially I was his live-in, highly skilled whore.’
‘You couldn’t leave?’
‘I could leave the house. Meet friends for drinks and lunch. But I wasn’t allowed to do anything without his permission. And honestly, until I discovered what I discovered, I had no reason to. He took care of me, and his bedroom needs were pretty vanilla.’
‘OK, so you found out, or you suspected, that you were never going to get paid. What did you do?’
‘I endeavoured to learn as much as I could about the Red Chamber. I knew what was in my bullshit contract, but I didn’t know what was in Vincent’s.
Unfortunately for him and the assholes he bought me from, I’m highly skilled at manipulating men.
They’d trained me to be. To anticipate his needs before he even had them kind of thing.
It wasn’t hard, particularly when he got blackout drunk every Saturday night.
I soon found his contract and I got the rest of the story piece by piece. It didn’t take me long.’
‘What did you discover?’
‘You know what I discovered. The Red Chamber had no intention of giving me my money. They were keeping it for themselves and I was scheduled to die the day my contract finished. At which point Vincent would sign a new contract for a new girl. Another fresh-faced, corn-fed dairy queen.’
‘You started gathering proof?’
She patted the conference folder. ‘As much as I could. Copied what he would miss, stole what he wouldn’t. There was enough for me to know I had to do something, but not enough to go to the feds and demand protection. I don’t know what it is you think you can do with it that they can’t.’
‘Let me worry about that,’ Poe said. ‘I have my best people on it. You stayed with him for a long time after you discovered what the Red Chamber had in store for you. By our reckoning, at least another fifteen or sixteen years?’
‘I did.’
‘Why?’
‘I figured I was safe until my contract was up. More than enough time to think of an exit strategy. Preferably one that didn’t have me looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.
And I did. I came up with the perfect out.
I was happy with it. Vincent was happy with it.
I would leave with some money and the Red Chamber wouldn’t suspect a thing. We’d even set a date.’
‘It didn’t go as planned?’
She shook her head, angry again. ‘It didn’t.’
‘What happened?’
‘What do you think happened?’ Océane said. ‘Esmerée fucking killed him.’